It's been almost a month since I started writing this blog in my head. In fact, I even titled it and saved it in my posts, thinking that would motivate me to write it. No such luck. A combination of procrastination and the demands of having a newborn have kept me from finishing it, but tonight as Landry is asleep in his swing and Josh is at church, I have no excuse.
Several times since Landry was born (8/15/12), I have caught myself thinking how hard transitional times are in life, especially for us Type A personalities. I tend to thrive best in a routine. I don't always love structure, but I need it. It's not even that I need the same routine, I just need a routine. I have learned to do well with change. You develop that skill when you have lived in 5 different states in the last 6 years. So after graduating law school, taking the dreaded bar exam, and having a baby, all in the span of 3 months, it's not the changes that have thrown me for a loop, it's the time of transition.
When I was in high school and college, I wrote a plethora of essays and research papers, and I really did enjoy writing. However, one thing I always struggled with were those transition sentences that are required to take your reader from one paragraph to the other and from one thought to the next. I am also guilty when having a conversation of jumping from topic to topic and confusing my listener because I have not let them in on the private conversation I am having with myself in my head. I just want to jump right to the next thing and not neatly tie up the last topic or introduce a new one.
Just as in literature and conversation where transitions are integral to tell a story, times of transition are necessary in life, even though they can be incredibly hard. Often in my writing, I would put the same generic transition sentences in every paragraph, hoping that my teacher would just pass right over them and not give them much attention. I have found myself living life in the same way. I try to ignore those transitional phases or sit idly by, waiting for life to return to normalcy. Right now, I think of all the things that I seem to be stuck in between and my tendency is to wish that life would fast forward to the other side. I am in between school and finding a job; in between being pregnant and fitting into those pre-pregnancy jeans; in between not exercising due to pregnancy and getting back into shape; and the list goes on and on.
As I began to complain about all the things I couldn't wait to happen in my life, I began to realize that we are always living in the in between. We are always in between something in our lives, and if that is the case, I will always be walking numbly through my life, wishing it away to get to the next stage. The in between is necessary in life because it allows us to appreciate the chapter that we are closing and prepare for the one that is ahead. We must learn to embrace those times of transition in our lives and learn how to live through them, not merely surviving but thriving.
